Shoemaker's list

[james_davis_nicoll]

In the course of checking Stephenson's debut in the November 1971 Analog, I came across a discussion of Martin Shoemaker's poll of Analog readers. Shoemaker was asking for recommended stories published prior to 1940.



Votes cast: 33

Who Goes There by John W. Campbell, Jr. (25)
Twilight by John W. Campbell, Jr (25)
A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum (20)
Helen O'Loy by Lester Del Rey (19)
Night by John W. Campbell, (17)
Forgetfulness by John W. Campbell (14)
Black Destroyer by A. E. Van Vogt (13)
The Lost Machine by John Beynon Harris (13)
Marooned Off Vesta by Isaac Asimov (12)
Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller (11)
The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster (11)
Promixa Centauri by Murray Leinster (10)
The Color Out of Space by H. P. Lovecraft (10)
Armageddon 2419 by Philip Nowlan (9)
Life Line by Robert A. Heinlein (9)
Robot's Return by Robert Moore Williams (8)
The Adaptive Ultimate by Stanley G. Weinbaum (8)
I, Robot by Eando Binder (8)
The Johnny Black Stories by L. Sprague de Camp (8)
The New Accelerator by H. G. Wells (7)
The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells (7)
He Who Shrank by Henry Hasse (7)
Politics by Murray Leinster (7)
The Blue Giraffe by L. Sprague de Camp (7)
The Faithful by Lester del Rey (7)
The Golden Egg by H. G. Wells (6)
Shambleau by C. L. Moore (6)
Within the Pyramid by R. de Witt Miller (6)
The Shadow Out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft (6)
The Runaway Skyscraper by Murray Leinster (6)
The Girl in the Golden Atom by Ray Cummings (6)
The Mad Planet series by Murray Leinster (6)
Old Faithful by Raymond Z. Gallun (6)
Seeds of the Dusk Raymond Z. Gallun (6)
He Hath Wings by Edmond Hamilton (6)

Comments

[dwight_benjamin_thieme]

I'm less interested in what stories the audience has read than I am where they first read them, if for no other reason than that I was an extremely rural reader. Silverberg's Voyagers in Time is where I first read The Sands of Time, for example. Asimov anthologies were huge, Before the Golden Age, Tomorrow's Children, etc. I guess what I'm saying is that I was too young and dumb to realize it at the time, but our tiny little library in Southwest Oregon did yeoman's duty. I'm also guessing that most people here also benefited from dedicated library staff that were perhaps not as appreciated as they should have been.

Of course, we also got a lot of trade paperback recycling like ERB's The Monster Men, etc.